What is SquareEnix’s plan of action to alleviate the pressures that...

[Kirihn]

It's no real secret these days that on FFXI money is nearly more important then experience points. This is because the majority of players want to be the best character they can be. This drives players to purchase the best possible equipment, the best possible food/juice enhancers and so forth.

However with the recent changes and the large removal of Gil Sellers the game is transforming from a state of challenge to a state of struggle. Players are forced after leveling for a day or two, to craft or farm for a week or more in order to purchase this newer Equipment just to go out and level for another day or two.

In most cases the only people who are really hurt by this failing economy are new players. People who are just starting to push into the mid 20's and really haven't established a craft at this point. Crafting for the most part is a losing game until the late levels in most cases, so these new players aren't even able to afford establishing themselves in a craft.

Players who have played for years are used to the high prices and sales of the game and for the most part are unwilling to take such a huge loss with the diving prices and thus they continue to sell their items and equipment for astronomical prices. Meanwhile low level crafters or farmers goods are dropping drastically in prices.

The issue here is simple but what is the resolution? Simply removing the Gil Sellers was the first step but now the economy is crashing down around us all, no one can afford to just take the losses in profit. I'm really not sure what SquareEnix can do at this point to help the players prosper, I do enjoy the competitive edge caused by the economic system of FFXI however it’s getting to be more of a daunting burden then a fully functional economy.

What this all boils down to in short is exactly this; What is SquareEnix’s plan of action to alleviate the pressures that have been imposed on the economy by Gil Sellers?

[Wise Donkey]

Time. The mass account banning is still a fairly new thing, and everything is still adjusting. I am a returned player, in my mid-20s, and I am not finding it all that different than when I left back in Sept. The FFXI economy is not in any dire, the-sky-is-falling state, IMHO.

[eticket109]

If you do your research and find the less trodden paths, it is very easy to make money in FFXI. Granted, crafting isn't as lucrative as it once was, but things don't cost as much as they used to either. There is no quick fix that SE can implement that wouldn't unbalance things. As WD said though, I don't think the situation is as dire as you're making it out to be.

[Omni]

Players who have played for years are used to the high prices and sales of the game and for the most part are unwilling to take such a huge loss with the diving prices and thus they continue to sell their items and equipment for astronomical prices. Sellers?

You have to be joking right?

The GS bans were to lower the inflation caused by too much gil in the economy. As a crafter still trying to sell high is not going to work in an economy that just had billions of gil taken out of it. Less gil are in the hands of the players making it more valuable. Crafters that havent adjusted their prices wont sell their goods.

Prices now are as low as they have been since NA release (which is as far back as my frame of reference goes). The economy is back to normal now.

You do not want to even know what prices where when GS was running rampant during the holiday season of 2005. If you think prices now are astronomical, your brain might explode when you see people shelling out 17million for a Scorpion harness or 8k for a stack of fire crystals.

Heck, scorpion harness has been sold for under 1 million on my server already. This is cheaper than when they release the game to NA. Everything has taken a drastic price hit due to the actions of SE in trying to curb GS.

It seems that you need to find a better way at making gil because your current way just isnt cutting it if you consider the economy now to be too harsh to survive. I understand the need to have nice equipment but please keep in mind that nice equipment and necessary equipment are two different things.

[Raydeus]

I propose making all craftable items aviable from NPCs with prices ranging from 50g to 1,000,000g max. Then I also propose making beastmen drop from 30g to 1000g according to lvl and get rid of crafting skills.

Vote Raydeus 2008!

I'm your best option to improve XI's economy and you know it!™





"This advertisement was sponsored by the "K33L Shantotto" fundation."

[BurningPanther]

I propose making all craftable items aviable from NPCs with prices ranging from 50g to 1,000,000g max. Then I also propose making beastmen drop from 30g to 1000g according to lvl and get rid of crafting skills.
Vote Raydeus 2008!
I'm your best option to improve XI's economy and you know it!™
"This advertisement was sponsored by the "K33L Shantotto" fundation."
I'd vote for him.

[Omgwtfbbqkitten]

If you do your research and find the less trodden paths, it is very easy to make money in FFXI. Granted, crafting isn't as lucrative as it once was, but things don't cost as much as they used to either. There is no quick fix that SE can implement that wouldn't unbalance things. As WD said though, I don't think the situation is as dire as you're making it out to be.

Very true, there are markets to tap into outside of the NM and crafting grind.

For example, I use my abilities as BST to farm solo what scares most people to farm in a PT. CoP stuff is a good example. Hippgryph Tailfeathers give me a satisfying boost to gil from time to time. Not to mention all the beastmen and kindtred seals you can rake in just from EXPing solo, I go right to work in the BCMMs.

And there will come a day I can farm iolites and eyes for gil as well.

Selling imperial currency has also helped me keep up funds for the jobs I play that deal in consumables, like ammo for RNG or COR and thos NIN tools. Assault has also helped with this, as I don't need stuff from every zone, so I sell what I can from that.

And from all that I levelled two of the "most expensive" jobs in the game. Go fig.

[Cometgreen]

You should probably qualify most of your claims with "I" or "me," kirihn. The economy is definitely changing, and I do think it's difficult to make any big profits from crafting these days, but a lot of your post seems based on some of your personal frustrations. For one thing, as Omni said, big ticket items have dropped in price as well.

[Minimee]

first off new players have an advantage now they didnt have a few months back. lower prices. they can make a little gil and buy items they need and maybe some nice +1 gear. people like myself who have been playing for many years are having to adjust to an economy that is deflating. i know haubergons and hauberks were around 10 mil now under 1 mil. my brother paid 8 mil for his hauby hes lost 7 mil due to deflation. now as for your statement about mid levels new players having problems with gil its their own fault. i see new players every time they level they run straight to the ah and buy something. they havent learned that you dont have to buy everything from the ah. they havent learned you dont have to buy new armor and weapons every level. there are many ways to make gil in ffxi. buy items from npcs and resell them on ah to noobs or people in a hurry. buy items from 1 ah resell on another ah i have made millions of gil doing this. the next way to make gil is good old fashioned hard work called farming. find a mob that you can kill that drops items you can sell on ah. crawlers in saratubuta drop silk threads good gil from quest or sell on ah for nice profit. kill beastmen they drop gil. mid leevls korrokola tunnel kill slimes for slime oils good seller low level alchemy item. i think the economy is healthier than it has ever been. just need to learn to make gil and spend it wisely.

[Saren]

Remove craft levels....why?

However with the recent changes and the large removal of Gil Sellers the game is transforming from a state of challenge to a state of struggle. Players are forced after leveling for a day or two, to craft or farm for a week or more in order to purchase this newer Equipment just to go out and level for another day or two.

I will admit that at the moment this is completely true for me but to be honest I don't really mind all that much. If I wanted to I could level with 'worse' gear than I am aiming at and I have had to revise down on what I originally wanted for my gear. . but I chose not to knowingly have bad gear. You have to be reasonable though, I have just decided to stop putting off levelling until I have an Astral ring and get one when I can make money more quickly and it's not such a long haul to get it assuming I stay unlucky with my wings of Fury drops :)

To be honest though I think a lot of the problem is that people are in too much of a hurry to level. I have been playing 3-4 months and I am only level 20 in 2 jobs and 7-10 on the other start jobs (seal farming on the cheap) but I have been doing a lot of other things. I have fame 2-3 in all the start cities (working on getting fame 4 in all of them for more gobbie bags), Rank 3, have been making money a lot, several attempts at Wings of Fury, keeping my skills up, did all the cut scenes to start CoP today, couple of crafts in the teens and a couple on the 20s etc etc. Final fantasy has a LOT to do. To be honest I am more levelling to give me access to things like CoP, job spells/abilities, new areas and quests than I am for getting my level number higher.

In most cases the only people who are really hurt by this failing economy are new players. People who are just starting to push into the mid 20's and really haven't established a craft at this point. Crafting for the most part is a losing game until the late levels in most cases, so these new players aren't even able to afford establishing themselves in a craft.

This I have to completely disagree with, sorry this is probably going to be a lengthy disagreement. If you research, you can make money. I will admit to having spent a LOT of time in front of an AH window making notes on prices and what sells well.

I have approached crafting so far totally from the point of view that I only level a craft to make something I can use or something that will make it easier for me to make money and I have mostly stuck to it. I started off harvesting to make my money, which was o.k. but not great so I started to plan more. I made a list of everything I got harvesting and then for each item looked at what I could do with it. I don't waste anything if I can help it. For example,

Grain/Herb/Vegetable seeds: Initially I was selling these but I garden on my main and on one mule with them. Need to check my vegetable seed recipe because some of the prices/sell rates have changed since I made my plan but grain seeds to tarutaru rice is getting me perhaps 30-40k every few days for a couple of minutes in my MH and the cost of a stack of fire crystals if I can't be bothered to farm for them. It's not a huge income but it helps. I will probably skew my recipes more towards producing ingredients I need for cooking later on, I am a whm and the fungi are good in the mushroom foods.

Most of the time I get a better return selling what I harvest raw than to craft it but still, harvesting has allowed me to level my clothcraft up to 23 and profit or about break even on every recipe I have used to level barring one ( I got bored farming yagudo feathers and wind crystals and bought them because they are very cheap). Even taking a cut in profits to level crafting as I have sometimes done I am still choosing to make a bit less money, it's still not actually costing me anything which is great if you don't have much.

Now I am starting to be able to make all the level 20-30 items, some of which are worth making for profit (seer's and Traders gear in particular looks promising, particularly if I have a halfway decent chance at a HQ and the CP item synths that I can use if I have spare CP) There is a cheap recipe that caps at 27 that I can make entirely from things I harvest (not sure if I will do this yet, depends on whether people are selling cloth for cheaper than I can make it, I really hate farming crystals individually and I can't beat many elementals yet). Hopefully I will be able to make my own seers when I hit 29 which would be kinda cool and will save me some cash (especially when I level clothcrafting/leatherworking enough to make my own HQ version)

I have done exactly the same thing pairing fishing with cooking though I got slightly bored of fishing so it's on a back burner for a while. I power levelled a bit on cooking but almost totally on recipes that made a profit. It took me about 5 days to sell all the insect paste I made but it made me a tidy profit and making the paste took me up 7 levels in a day. I also made bug broth for a good few levels and sold that, for profit, to an NPC which was really fast. Suddenly I am level 25 and at a good distance to skill up make my own pineapple juice which is a great boost for my partying and saves me money.

I know that was a long way of saying if you research you can make money but I thought illustrating the approach in a more detailed way would help make it clearer. It's taking me time to make money and my crafting is almost certainly levelling more slowly than someone who has taken a chunk of money and is using it to level but I am making money or saving money crafting and levelling them at the same time.

Even if you just go out and kill a load of mobs and make notes on what you get from each mobs then check the AH to see which of those items sell, then go kill more of those (silk thread and beehive chips helped me quite a lot from level 6-13 ish). Making money just takes being a little organised, putting some effort in. Helm in particular is a totally job requirement free way to start out making money and each branch is linked to a craft so you can do the same skill up/make money thing I have been doing.

[LyonheartLakshmi]

In most cases the only people who are really hurt by this failing economy are new players. People who are just starting to push into the mid 20's and really haven't established a craft at this point. Crafting for the most part is a losing game until the late levels in most cases, so these new players aren't even able to afford establishing themselves in a craft.

Players who have played for years are used to the high prices and sales of the game and for the most part are unwilling to take such a huge loss with the diving prices and thus they continue to sell their items and equipment for astronomical prices. Meanwhile low level crafters or farmers goods are dropping drastically in prices.
If you want to make a serious case for SE to consider, you should probably re-examine the claims that you are making. A couple of things you state seem contradictory to the experiences I've read from many other players.

1. New players need to level a craft in order to make a living? Most of the complaints I've seen from crafters is that it is very hard to get any craftable items to sell on a regular basis right now. Many of them are disillusioned because they have invested so much into their crafting skill, yet they could be making just as much (if not more) gil from activities such as HELM or farming. From a crafter vs new player standpoint, new players seem to be on even footing with most of the crafting population. They really only are at a disadvantage to higher level players, who are able to farm higher level mobs. But that has always been the case, regardless of the state of the economy. As an established crafter, I'm currently bringing in more gil through gardening, an activity any new player can access without great difficulty.

2. Established players are unwilling to sell their gear for the current market prices? This is only the case with big money items, things that new players don't need and only dream about having one day. Even the lower level big money items like Leaping Boots and Astral Rings have come down significantly. Meanwhile, crafted NQ items (things that should be the bread and butter of new players) are as cheap as ever.

[Hantz]

I want the deflation to keep going at a crazy pace. When we get to the point that the gil awarded for quests is comparable to what you can make doing anything else, my head will explode.

[Omni]

it's definitely a buyers market right now. everything is so low in price. if you want to craft, THIS is the time to do it. materials and crystals are so cheap now, and when inflation picks up again as all economies tend to experience, you'll have your leveled craft for cheaper than it would take when inflation kicks in.

it's normal for people to take time off from leveling to make gil. i do it all the time. i know you want to get to that next level or get that next /ja but its something everyone does. this game isnt like wow where they practically hand out gold left and right. you gotta put a little effort into vanadiel.

good luck.

[Karinya]

Crafting makes a poor player poorer. As you point out, the early levels are unprofitable (often *wildly* unprofitable) and a poor player simply isn't going to be able to reach the higher levels until they have a substantial source of income (that isn't the craft).

Farming all your ingredients can make it seem like you're crafting at a profit, but if you spent 2 hours farming instead of 1 farming and 1 crafting, you'd generally have made substantially more money. (Similar remarks apply to HELM, gardening or fishing for ingredients.)

Heck, that can even be true for high level crafters, and they paid millions of gil (either directly or as an opportunity cost) to get to high crafting levels.

I'd strongly advise anyone against getting into crafting for profit. If you don't enjoy crafting for its own sake, don't do it. There are other ways to make money, often just as good or better.

Crafting has one thing in common with gambling - most people who don't keep careful records think they're ahead overall, even when they're not. They remember the wins and forget the losses.


P.S. Most of this doesn't really apply to fishing because bait is so damn cheap. But there's still the "would I have made more money doing something else in that time?" issue, so fishing isn't necessarily ultra-profitable either. Again, do it if you enjoy it, otherwise do something else.

[kiffkin]

Crafting for the most part is a losing game until the late levels in most cases, so these new players aren't even able to afford establishing themselves in a craft.
I already mentioned this in your thread in the goldsmithing forum, but I'll add a bit of background here. I currently have goldsmithing at 41, and I am making a nice profit, as I have been right from the start. I didn't mention that I'm doing this on a level 1 mule; buying, growing or mining all my ingredients (except some lightning crystals that I farm, but I can grow them if I need to); also levelling smithing and leatherworking on that same mule and I started out doing this with an initial investment of 50,000 gil.

50,000 gil is not hard to get from farming - you can easily do that in less than a week selling items from Ronfaure/Sarutabaruta/Gustaberg, and I'm being generous on the timing there. When I started playing (before I got my first job to 30) if I had less than 50,000 gil on me at any time, I went out and farmed because I felt so poor.

[Kirihn]

I'd have to say that I would consider this thread a success, even if most of you don't agree with my point of view, other perspectives have opened me up a bit after reading through the lines.

This post I created was a result of a poll from my LS on Diabolos Server, since most of us are rank 5 or lower I would guess the view is a bit skewed. However, I do still stand by my points that it's gotten rough with prices now... in some ways they are coming down. (I was able to get a pair of Battle gloves for 3K the other day and a nomad mantle for 10K) I guess from one point of view it's hard to go from making 200K farming in a few hours to making a max of 40K from farming in the same ammount of time.

I remember when Fire Crystals went for 8-9K a stack, and just as most of you have said, since costs have dropped so have profits and in the end it all just seems like money is pouring out through invisible holes in my pockets. I suppose that's just the way it goes though, the numbers have changed but costs are still the same.

Regardless, I do think that the majority of you have cleared this up for me. If you do have any other comments though feel free to add on as the tidbits of information I've picked from reading between the lines here will probably help me a lot in the whole money making aspect.

[Insert]

I find the only argument I see not having been made here to be the one most relevant.

SE will do nothing to repair our "PLAYER-BASED" economy. They have from the very beginning of the game stressed that the game's economy will be player-based. They did nothing to abate the massive inflation that we had a few years back, and they will do nothing again while the prices plummet.

All of their efforts into RMT activity in Vana'diel have focussed solely on those that are hacking the game. Only those caught exploiting, POS hacking, botting, and packet injecting have been the ones to feel the reaper's blade. All the still obvious RMT that you see plaguing Vana'diel when YOU go to earn money or items are just the ones not stupid enough to cheat to get it. They still pay, and still get to play.

And all the crafters are being hurt not just by RMT crafters but by themselves. You undercut to sell items by a little cause you need the gil, so does everyone else. Until the players start putting a value on gil instead of "Omgzorz i needz teh gilz now 0.o !!!!!11!" then this will continue to happen. I have personally been undercut by 150K on items I have crafted, and that doesn't even cover the cost of reagents at the moment.